That Music List

Saturday, 5 September 2026

LIST 270 - 05/09/2026

(Town Bike - Going Up the Country, Church House Inn, Congleton 14/06/2015. Picture is author's own)

Hello again,

Whisper it, but I don't believe I have any actual headlines for you this week! Certainly nothing which necessitates the usual sort of essay piece introduction, at least. I expect that might change once I've been to two gigs between the publication of today's and next week's Lists, however.

So permit me just to bullet point a few things (did I just use "bullet point" as a verb? That merits censure...) and not hold you up any longer. This week you might particularly like:

To start with, part of the soundtrack of your childhood Sunday afternoon televisual habits (not the Ski Sunday theme, I'll say in advance, though with the announcement of its cancellation just a few days ago it would have made for an appropriate inclusion itself).

New or recent fare from Haute & Freddy, Good News, Death Valley Girls, the (at least this time) very MBV-sounding DIIV, Hunter As A Horse (venomous snake-heavy official video not included) and Swansea Sound. On a superficial level, the last-named affords us the joy of witnessing Amelia Fletcher swearing at long-time collaborator and friend Hue Williams. On a more serious level, Mean to be Mean tackles head-on exactly the kind of vituperative abuse meted out to Sarah and Sarah-like bands by the music weeklies and monthlies a generation or two ago - we've already covered the sort at length on these pages this year. See also Jane Duffus's direct confrontation of serial offenders David Quantick and Simon Price in her These Things Happen: The Sarah Records Story. I'll leave you to decide how well they come out of it.

A further trio of jangly delights, comprising the 2024 reactivation of one of Rose Melberg's best-loved projects; the b-side of the first ever release on the superb Leicester indie Pickled Egg; and a cut from a lovely side project by Even As We Speak frontwoman Mary Wyer. Winners all.

A particularly fine b-side from Wire's short-lived, early 1990s Robert Gotobed-less period recording as Wir.

The furthest delve into the archives for a Straight In At feature to date, with two (out of only five all told) new entries in the hit parade from this very date in 1958. Both are of some historical significance; Rebel Rouser was the first UK chart entry of any description for Duane Eddy, whilst Volare by Domenico Modugno is both the only Eurovision Song Contest entry ever to win a Grammy and one of the all-time biggest selling tracks ever to have originated from it. Not bad considering it managed just third place on the night. Note also none of this releasing of Eurovision tracks commercially months in advance back then, the 1958 Contest having taken place in mid-March.

Some typically sprightly fun from Liverpool punk poppers and indiepop festival regulars Town Bike. The hastily-cleaned-up-for-a-family-audience version of Bastard Heart played at Going up the Country remains a fondly remembered live highlight, not least for all of us who knew what Sarah Maher would ordinarily have been singing.

Long before Peter Hook saw The Light or even Monaco, there was Revenge - or as an unattributed quote in the sleeve notes for volume nine of Indie Top 20 had it, "a load of brickies farting around with guitars and synthesizers they'd found, and that was the good bit". Ouch. Certainly this Mike Pickering and Graeme Park reinterpretation of a 1990 Revenge single captures and elevates the better parts of the project.

A classic cut from The Strokes' debut album in lieu of anything from the current long-player which, with the very best will in the world, I'm seriously struggling to warm to. PUT THE AUTOTUNE AWAY, JULIAN. It's killing one song after another.

One other small parish note - List #08 is the latest from the archives to have had its links repaired and formatting brought up to date. Among its highlights is a Then and Now for Sparks; though maybe it would be better rebranded as Then and Not Quite Now But Not Quite As Then As Then Either, given that List is more than seventeen years old now.

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 03/09/2026).
Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

ISN’T THAT…?
SOUND STAGE ORCHESTRA - Holy Mackerel (1976)

HAUTE & FREDDY - Touch Touch (2026)

THUNDERCAT – I Love Louis Cole (2020)

ALI FARKA TOURÉ & TOUMANI DIABATÉ – Kaira (2005)

WIR - Nice from Here (1991)

PET SNAKE - Getting Older (2024)

I LOVE POP MUSIC AND I WILL FIGHT YOU
PET SHOP BOYS - Dancing Star (2024)

STRAIGHT IN AT… September 5th, 1958
DOMENICO MODUGNO - Volare (15)
DUANE EDDY AND THE REBELS - Rebel Rouser (26)

SWANSEA SOUND - Mean to be Mean (2026)

SPARKLEHORSE – Spirit Ditch (1995)

GOOD NEWS - Rise (2026)
(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

RICKY - Stop Knocking the Walls Down (2004)

WIR SIND DIE NEUEN GÖTTER
ANNE CLARK - Sleeper in Metropolis (1984)

RAPPING SONGS
BIZ MARKIE - Just a Friend (1989)

DEATH VALLEY GIRLS - Message from the Venus Flower (2026)

AIRPORT GIRL - Between Delta and Delaware (1998)

TOWN BIKE – Bad Girls (2007)

BETH GIBBONS - Floating on a Moment (2024)

TRICKY – You Don’t (1995)

A TANGLE OF JANGLE
THE SOFTIES - Go Back in Time (2024)
THE MELONS - Eskimo (1997)
HER NAME IN LIGHTS - She Said (2004)

COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
REVENGE - Pineapple Face[‘s Big Day] (1990)

DIIV - The Fountain (2026)

STANDARD FARE - Married (2010)

WE’VE GOT A FUZZBOX AND WE’RE GONNA USE IT - Rules and Regulations (1986)

THE STROKES - Alone, Together (2001)

HUNTER AS A HORSE - Paradise Lost (2026)

IN LOVING MEMORY: Gary Dwyer
THE TEARDROP EXPLODES - Sleeping Gas (1979)

Saturday, 29 August 2026

LIST 269 - 29/08/2026

Hello again,

"Unable to get to any of the remaining gigs on their farewell tour, so, in common with likely many present tonight, for me The Spook School's Indietracks valedictory performance really was a goodbye.

A heartfelt thank you to one of the most important bands our little world has ever unearthed, tackling all matters transgender, gender binary, toxic masculinity, homophobia and so on unflinchingly, yet with a hugely relatable vulnerability".

The words I shared on Facebook back on July 27th, 2019, for what to this day remains tied equal as one of my favourite four or five gigs of all time. An emotionally charged, hopeful, angry, defiant, poignant, funny, life-affirming, vital set from a band which lived and breathed all of those attributes every day of its existence.

A few further gigs followed up to the first week of September that year, and that - save for the briefest of returns in 2023 to mark the tenth anniversary of their Dress Up debut - appeared to be that.

Until, with little to no warning, a quick "We're back" message appeared on their Facebook presence on Tuesday morning of this week.

It's stating the obvious that all of the issues which most exercised the Glasgow four-piece first time around are very much still prominent in the public discourse seven and a bit years on, if not more so.

In particular, interviews for Clashmusic and God is in the TV since the announced return have devoted attention to the ever more depressing trend to talk about trans rights around rather than with transgender people, and usually in pejorative, ignorant and judgmental terms.

With the hopes that the content of their older material would have become quaint and outdated by now clearly dashed, but acknowledging that they didn't especially want to play just the back catalogue if returning, the time was right for the band to take once more to the studio, and to come out swinging.

Hence Falling, the blast of energy also released into the wild on Tuesday just gone. As a statement of intent musically and lyrically, it does its job with rare aplomb, and the January release date of the parent album Like A Heartbeat already feels like the first genuine highlight of 2027 to which to look forward.

(The Spook School, The Red House, Sheffield 09/11/2013. Picture is author's own)

Some of you out there will have greeted the news of fresh Queens of the Stone Age product as rabidly enthusiastically as I that of The Spook School. I couldn't confess to that same level of fandom of the former, but the highs in a now thirty-year career under that name have been very high, and on a human interest level it's pleasing to read that frontperson Josh Homme's health issues - not limited to this decade's cancer diagnosis - appear to be past tense now.

Easy Street makes for a fascinating lead from forthcoming ninth studio album Perfecth [SIC], in so far as repeated listens to it still wouldn't necessarily pin it down stylistically as a QOTSA track.

I needed to hear it a fair few times on the radio before ceasing to misidentify it as something from among David Byrne's recent output, whereas that instrumental outro bears such a stark resemblance to the title track from Brian Eno's 1975 masterpiece Another Green World (also familiar to many of a certain age as the theme tune to BBC2's erstwhile arts strand Arena) that I couldn't not also include the last-named this week by way of a compare and contrast exercise.

***

On a sadder note, the number of artists requiring an In Loving Memory feature in a forthcoming List has gone through the roof in the past couple of weeks, with of course one very high profile candidate - perhaps the most high profile of all - newly added to the list of qualifiers mere days ago.

I'm not in the habit of rearranging the order in which I come to them according to fame, as we're all equals once we've passed away, so it'll be a few weeks before a Dolly Parton tribute appears. I think that's how this most selfless, saintly of human beings might have preferred it anyway.

As such, chronologically it's the turn of William Orbit to be commemorated this week. One of my two choices is an admittedly very, very obvious choice of an Orbit-helmed mega single from Madonna, and I make no apologies for that.

I'd argue that it's hard to overstate just how significant a creative fug Madonna had entered by the mid-1990s, certainly where her studio albums were concerned at least - anodyne, charmless ballads; dance-pop tracks often suffocated by floury production (some of the Nellee Hooper and Shep Pettibone examples have dated horribly); and writing collaborations with the likes of Björk which painted neither party in their absolute best light.

In terms of helping a high-profile but water-treading performer turn themselves inside out, Ray of Light - the album and the single - is right up there among the most successfully transformative examples of all time. I wouldn't be certain that all of Madonna's success which has followed for nigh on three decades since would have been guaranteed without this turning of the proverbial corner.

My other selection from Orbit's back catalogue was always going to be In the Realm of the Senses, the first track I'd ever heard by him and by extension by Bassomatic. I'm as certain as I can be that I have the late Annie Nightingale to thank for playing this.

I like its playfulness; a description of S-Express without any of the 70s/disco trappings but with more 90s smarts might be doing it a colossal disservice, but it was what came to mind at the time and largely still does now.

A few months later, the follow-up Fascinating Rhythm would go big, and a hitherto promising but commercially relatively unrewarded career would start to gain traction.

***

Heading the other way critically and commercially - and at speed - as Orbit's star started to rise were former post-punk seven-piece turned chart-topping trio (and later duo) Thompson Twins.

The wrong side of albums in 1987 and 1989 which had both tanked utterly, such was the antipathy towards their brand by the time of 1991's eighth and final studio album Queer (a title inspired by an Edith Sitwell ode rather than any grab for attention) that the white label club remixes of lead track Come Inside which preceded its release were issued under an alias - Feedback Max - instead.

Although those mixes - of which the longest of the House variants is included in this week's List - were highly acclaimed by club DJs, this move afforded them only the briefest of respite, most radio programmers immediately dropping all manifestations of the track (including the poppier single mix) like a bad penny upon Feedback Max's exposition as Thompson Twins.

Note "most". Bigger of heart than many, and still seemingly kindly disposed towards the band with his chart music hat on, Mark Goodier continued to play not only both the single and club versions of Come Inside on Radio 1's Evening Session, but also the two follow-ups (wherein the dance stylings of the Feedback Max experiment were pushed more to the fore on the actual radio singles).

It did little for Tom Bailey and Alannah Currie's fortunes, all three singles peaking between #53 at best and #85 at worst, and the only significant territory in which the Queer album charted at all was Australia, with the British release cancelled outright if I remember correctly.

All of which is far less than the project deserved; Come Inside in all of its incarnations is at the very least a perfectly serviceable track, and in its Feedback Max House form an absolute corker which I return to over and over even 35 years on.

I need hardly add; I don't believe there's a cat in hell's chance that any of the cooler, more cynical subsequent custodians of the Evening Session would ever have given it the time of day.

***

In what's been one of my favourite Lists to compile since the return at the start of the year (can you tell?), I'm also particularly pleased to include:

A Then and Now appearance by enduring surrealist psychedelic rock treasure Robyn Hitchcock. An "unmarketable" artist, as he put it himself during an interview with the New York Tribune's Evan Smith a few years back, he's nevertheless affording current album The Confuser a seemingly higher visual profile than has sometimes been the case, Yesterday's Rain clocking in as already the fourth track taken from it to gain an official video.

As promised and threatened a few weeks ago, a mid-1980s appearance by Michael Cretu in his own right, rather than as the producer of the likes of Hubert Kah or Inker & Hamilton.

The story of the pensioner I'd quite like to grow up to be in a decade and a half's time, as told with humour, beauty and dignity by the ceaselessly wonderful Gavin Osborn.

A promo by The Scaramanga Six which I must only have half-watched back in the day, as I'd never realised just how much it featured their then producer, the late and of course much-missed Tim Smith. In virtually the same week as members of the reactivated Cardiacs - specifically Mike Vennart on stage, Kavus Torabi on Facebook - made comments that could be interpreted as implying the recent live appearance at the ArcTanGent festival in Bristol might just be the band's last ever, it doesn't seem unreasonable to show their leader of the starry skies still in his prime. God, I miss him.

Something Tim may well have enjoyed, or at least directly or indirectly inspired, by Crush Fund. There's certainly the wide-eyed, skittish inventiveness and feel of 1980s Cardiacs about it. Another fine find courtesy of Sheffield Live's The Breakdown, or more accurately in this instance friend of the show Ralph Clay.

New releases from Beijing-via-Glasgow one man and a puppet punk entity The Burgers and Precious Recordings' Franco-Belgian indie pop and yé-yé purveyors Coup Dur, this ahead of their respective appearances in Sheffield on the 6th and 11th of September. I'd say I'm including them to help inform your decision on whether to go to see either, but in truth I already know that you should see both...

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 25/08/2026).
Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

xPROPAGANDA - Don’t (You Mess with Me) (2022)

THE SPOOK SCHOOL - Falling (2026)

PSAPP – Eating Spiders (2006)

PORRIDGE RADIO – Long (2020)

PAN AMSTERDAM - Hot Potato (2026)

EUROTASTIC
MICHAEL CRETU - Samurai (1985)

THEN AND NOW: Robyn Hitchcock
ROBYN HITCHCOCK - Yesterday’s Rain (2026)
ROBYN HITCHCOCK & THE EGYPTIANS - Balloon Man (1988)

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE - Easy Street (2026)

BRIAN ENO - Another Green World (1975)

ADRIANNE LENKER - Sadness as a Gift (2024)

REM – Sad Professor (1998)

T RAUMSCHMIERE – All Systems Go! (2005)

I LOVE POP MUSIC AND I WILL FIGHT YOU
MADONNA - Ray of Light (1998)

IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
GAVIN OSBORN - Albert Went Out to See Rock Bands (2012)

THE BURGERS - Bedroom (2026)

REVEREND HORTON HEAT – Marijuana (1992)

THE SCARAMANGA SIX – I Can See a Murder (2008)

OMAR SOULEYMAN – Khattaba (2013)

FABRIQUÉ EN FRANCE
COUP DUR - J’Attendrai (2026)

GOODIER BEFORE WHILEY & LAMACQ
THOMPSON TWINS - Come Inside (Feedback Max House Mix) (1991)

CRUSH FUND - Go (2026)

(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

SEBADOH - Tree (1999)

SHELLEY SHORT – Right Away (2010)

THE ROEBUCKS - Sable (2022)

SCIENTISTROCK
QUICKSPACE SUPERSPORT – Exemplary Swishy Quickspace Wonderspot (1995)

IN LOVING MEMORY: William Orbit
BASSOMATIC - In the Realm of the Senses (1990)

Saturday, 22 August 2026

LIST 268 – 22/08/2026

(Helen McCookerybook - Going Up the Country, Church House Inn, Congleton 14/06/2015. Picture is author's own)

Hello again,

First up, a very big thank you to everyone who has continued to support That Music List with your patronage right through high summer.

This is actually the first time since 2012 (season four) that I've kept the blog going throughout August, instead often opting to end a season right after the Indietracks festival in July; and the comparatively low number of visits for the last two Lists in particular presumably speak to people's competing priorities at this time of year (outside activities, holidays, etc.).

Your interest in the music I like to share on here is nothing which I take for granted, and it's a pleasure to serve you. Thanks again.

In terms of listening pleasure this week, the return of Teenage Fanclub rates an inevitable personal highlight, if one virtually impossible to condense into just the four songs - including the brand new Day in the Sun - for A Session of Sorts.

As well as that one, plus a favourite from 2023 and a splendid Thirteen era out-take, the irony of including a b-side by departed bassist and co-founder Gerard Love entitled Please Stay is not lost on me.

Comments left with practically each and every one of the band's videos on YouTube, Facebook posts, etc. suggest that some fans are taking longer than others to forgive the nature of Love's departure all of eight years ago now (predicated on an aversion to regular global air travel, if memory serves); and a musical shift, subtle but tangible nevertheless, has indeed come upon the band since.

I'm more inclined to give thanks for the almost two decades of Love's work with Teenage Fanclub than lament what has followed, especially as what has followed is still exceptionally good by most standards.

Yes, the power-pop hooks and greater immediacy of a lot of Love's work are missed, and I'm not sure a Sparky's Dream or Star Sign would or could ever come from one of his erstwhile colleagues. Nevertheless, Norman Love's killer ear for classic '70s American songwriting and Ray McGinley's often more cerebral wordplay and structures are still two tricks executed expertly when many bands barely manage one.

Long may they prosper. Incidentally, A Session of Sorts is already the second of our raft of new features to have included Teenage Fanclub since TML returned (the occasional series of instrumentals featured them back in List #246) and, spoiler alert, they'll be back again in another before the year's out.

Going even further back to That Music List's earliest possible history, I was reminded when fixing its links the other week that TML #1 included the characteristically smart, quirky, catchy Knickerbocker by Brighton electronic / nu-disco favourites Fujiya & Miyagi. Lo and behold, what should turn up within days of that but the lead track from the tenth - count them - studio album New Shiny Object, due out during autumn half term week.

Very much business as usual here, but that usual business is of course usually very good, David Best's familiar repeated, almost whispered vocal style, the Krautrock tinged keys and all. The well is in no danger of running dry 26 years into the band's existence on this admittedly limited evidence.

(An aside of I suspect limited interest, but still; of all of the acts to feature on that very first List back in February 2009, I've realised that every one of them has made further appearances in these pages over the ensuing years bar two - Circulus and Robotnik. I'm sure that can probably be put right, and probably ought to have long before now).

Among the myriad (or slightly fewer) other highlights this week, you might also like:

New, or at least not ancient, releases from Hollow Hand, Tony Bontana and Robber Robber.

Among the best-known tracks by former Chef and very much present-day academic and writer Helen McCookerybook (Dr Helen Reddington). She's at the Controls, Helen's 2021 work on female producers and engineers (feel free to follow this Bookshop.org link), grows ever nearer the top of my to-read pile.

Following on from an old-but-new theme of last week, November 89 is a newly reissued piece from Wolfgang Voigt, perhaps best known whenever featured on these pages for his dark techno/ambient vehicle Gas. It is perhaps less bucolic or hallucinogenic and more harsh than what was to come in seminal Gas releases such as Pop and Königsforst, and if anything gives off a horror soundtrack vibe, but that makes it no less fascinating an historical artefact.

Also old-but-new, The Offs meet WrongTom sees the south London DJ/producer give some tracks from the 1970s/1980s San Franciscan punk-reggae pioneers his particular band of dub treatment. The route to getting these to see the light of day has been tortuous, The Offs' initial momentum four decades ago chopped at the legs by lead singer Don Vinil's unexpected passing, and WrongTom's The Offs in Dub project subsequently left album-less for a long while by label boss David Ferguson's own demise. Here at last on Bandcamp, however, are at least some of the fruits of their labours.

The one top 40 hit - eventually; it required some reissuing - by Latin Quarter, whose Modern Times debut album from 1985 remains a favourite in this household. For the life of me I can't find the Bluesky post repeated not so long ago when the relevant 1986 edition of Top of the Pops was last repeated. The gist of it, however, was that nothing summarised the eighties more perfectly than Steve Skaith observing there are more tanks than food in the Ogaden one minute, followed by a pink woollens-clad Su Pollard singing a TV wedding show theme the next. Yep.

A terrific, empowering number by radical San Franciscan industrial hip-hoppers Consolidated, this time in league with self-styled vaginacore slam poets The Yeastie Girlz. It was always fascinating to watch this getting a spin at Oldham's alt. nightclubs of the early-mid 1990s - and many spins it got - and see the colour drain out of the faces of certain lads when they realised what they'd just sung along to. YouTube footage suggests vocalist Adam Sherburne performs this one himself at Consolidated gigs to the present day.

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 12/08/2026).
Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

KILLING JOKE – Eighties (1984)

HOLLOW HAND - Heavy Metal T-Shirt (2026)

THE KITCHEN - Blind Tease (2003)

DJANGO DJANGO - In Your Beat (2017)

THEN AND NOW: Fujiya & Miyagi
FUJIYA & MIYAGI - Lowest Common Denominator (2026)
FUJIYA & MIYAGI - Pussyfooting (2008)

A SESSION OF SORTS: Teenage Fanclub
TEENAGE FANCLUB - Foreign Land (2023)

TONY BONTANA ft LEO SIERRA - Recoup (2026)

AIRIEL - Shirley Temple Tidal Wave (demo version) (1997)

JANE WEAVER - Stages of Phases (2021)

THE SHOCKER – Smoke Rings (2003)

HELEN AND THE HORNS – Freight Train (1984)

DANCE HALL AT PEEL ACRES
GANG RELATED & MASK - Not Not (1996)

A SESSION OF SORTS: Teenage Fanclub
TEENAGE FANCLUB - Day in the Sun (2026)
TEENAGE FANCLUB - Mad Dog 20/20 (1993/1994)

LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR – The Pattern Room (2015)

LATIN QUARTER - Radio Africa (1985)

HELEN LOVE – Calm Down Dad (2009)

THE LOVELY EGGS - I Nearly Saw a Stabbing Last Night (2015)

THE OFFS MEET WRONGTOM - Cool Dub (198n/2026)

(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

BULLETPROOF
CONSOLIDATED and the YEASTIE GIRLS - You Suck (1993)

A SESSION OF SORTS: Teenage Fanclub
TEENAGE FANCLUB - Please Stay (2005)

ROBBER ROBBER - Again (2026)

MARK HOLLIS - The Colour of Spring (1998)

MILES HUNT - These Things Remembered (Not At All) (2007)

GUI & ADHI - Turiya (2024)

IN LOVING MEMORY: John Douglas
THE TRASH CAN SINATRAS - Obscurity Knocks (1990)

THE LONG GOODBYE
WOLFGANG VOIGT - November 89 (1989/2026)

Saturday, 15 August 2026

LIST 267 - 15/08/2026

(Liechtenstein - Indietracks Festival, 26/07/2008. Pictures are author's own)

Hello again,

Trust you have all survived another abnormally hot week in most of Britain without melting, and remembered not to stare too long into the eclipse.

The Nev Clay session on 6 Music this week was predictably, reassuringly lovely, was it not? It'll be free to listed to in the expected places for a while longer, and I can't recommend you doing so enough if you missed it.

Since we spoke last week, I've accelerated the process of updating the older Lists from 2009-2018. Exactly thirty have now been so treated which means, added to this year's 31 editions (and counting), just shy of a quarter of all Lists have fully working embedded links and are otherwise as user-friendly as I can get them.

What brought on this spurt of action? Not a desperate attempt to wring further clicks out of ancient copy. Absolutely not, your honour. Rather, until going back through them all again the other week I hadn't realised just how many were in need of significant repair.

It wasn't surprising that many links from the 2009 era had broken in the intervening seventeen years. It was more surprising, however, how much the formatting of many more recent Lists had appeared to have gone awry - tiny fonts, texts in (or even highlighted in) inappropriately stinging colours, etc. At this remove, I couldn't possibly begin to identify a cause.

There's no particular logic to the order in which I'm updating stuff - it's more fun just dipping into the archive and enjoying songs for (in many cases) the first time in absolute years whilst I perform my repairs.

If I were to draw your attention to any of the latest updated Lists, however, they would be #156 (a Tim Smith tribute), #222 and #224 (a two-part 1996 special containing not actually very many of the choices in Tom Ewing's current World Cup of 1996 competition elsewhere in Cyberspace) and #231 (a Mark E Smith tribute).

***

As regards this week's additions to the TML annals? You may or may not be pleased to learn I don't have extended pieces on any of the selections this time around, but I do feel moved to recommend the following nevertheless;

New or at least not ancient stuff from Lael Neale, Arun Sood & Angeline Morrison, Kavus Torabi, Kwamé Bâ and Castle Dragon, the last-named doing a neat line in fantasy costumed metal.

An old-but-new release of a track from the vaults of the Wellington, New Zealand-based World Resources, a label given to putting out noise pop and drone tracks (think an Aotearoan take on Flying Saucer Attack's rural psychedelia) on home-recorded tapes and lathe-cut vinyl in tiny, hard to find batches. A new compilation, Fully Nowhere, attempts to bring some of the label highlights - including some previously unreleased - together at last, and my choice from it of a track by Surface of the Earth is quite deliberate, all of the songs on the compilation featuring between one or more of that pivotal act's three members.

Two tracks twenty years apart from Frànçois Marry, someone whose career has been followed enthusiastically in this household ever since the days of his self-published Frànçois et Luc releases at the start of the century. Frànçois's ongoing Atlas Mountains project has been a constant source of delight across ten varied, wide-eyed albums now, only the third of which - 2009's Plaine Inondable - I've ever had the pleasure to see done live, in a rightly captivated Betsey Trotwood in London. More fool me.

A quick highlight from Dawn Landes's 2009 Sweetheart Rodeo long-player as a heads-up that she plays a collector's item British gig at the Golden Hinde in London this coming Monday (the 17th). I understand I missed her play in Dresden by no more than a couple of days when I was out that way recently. Nnnnkkk.

Liechtenstein, one of the real finds of the first Indietracks I attended back in 2008, and pictured at the top of this List on that festival's very short-lived outdoor truck stage. I can't remember whether I've ever added photos of this arrangement previously, but how on earth the massed ranks of the likes of The Deirdres or Red Pony Clock squeezed onto it without any toppling off the front is something I'll live to a hundred and never not ponder. A proper stage would replace it for 2009.

The standout from the 1993 debut LP of future She Wants Revenge frontperson Justin Warfield. There's a more impressive cast list supporting this than I'd ever realised at the time - Beastie Boys and Prince Paul for starters.

A personal favourite from one-time Sub Pop act The Grifters, whose namechecking of The Colorblind James Experience in Last Man Alive came back to mind when the latter featured on last week's List.

A Long Goodbye from downtempo duo The Woodleigh Research Facility which could have counted as a belated In Loving Memory, featuring as it does the late Andrew Weatherall alongside fellow Sabres of Paradise and Sabrettes co-founder Nina Walsh.

This week's actual In Loving Memory, a John Peel-released, note-perfect pastiche of Joe Cocker that serves as a perfect reminder of the extraordinary and frequently underestimated musical talents of the recently departed Bill Oddie. Not a gibbon or black pudding to be seen.

AIR - Kelly Watch the Stars (1998)

DAWN LANDES - Clown (2009)

LAEL NEALE - Slip Away (2026)

EUROTASTIC
BABYS GANG - Challenger (1984)

THEN AND NOW: Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains
FRÀNÇOIS & THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS – Slow Steps in the Snow (2025)
FRÀNÇOIS & THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS – I’m So Glad I Met You (2005)

SETH FAERGOLZIA – Doubting Won’t Do (2014)

THE CLEARS - Rock ‘N Roll Band (1997)

ARUN SOOD & ANGELINE MORRISON - A Rìbhinn a Bheil Cuimhn' Agad (2026)

GRIZZLY BEAR – Ready, Able (2009)

NINA NASTASIA - Stormy Weather (2000)

IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
LIECHTENSTEIN - Stalking Skills (2007)

SCIENTISTROCK
SURFACE OF THE EARTH - Commandcom (199n/2026)

DEERHUNTER – All the Same (2015)

THE FATIMA MANSIONS – Go Home Bible Mike (1992)

RITON PRESENTS GUCCI SOUNDSYSTEM ft JARVIS COCKER - Let’s Stick Around (2021)

THE GRIFTERS - Last Man Alive (1996)

KAVUS TORABI - Water into Wine (2026)

RAPPING SONGS
JUSTIN WARFIELD - Fisherman’s Grotto (1993)

I WAS AN ARMCHAIR RAVER
ENERGISE – Report to the Dance Floor (Full Alert Mix) (1990)

KWAMÉ BA - Lévé (2026)

THE FRUMPIES – Eunuch Nights (1998)

CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG – Anna (2011)

CASTLE RAT - Dragon (2026)

GRAM RABBIT – Dirty Horse (2004)

IN LOVING MEMORY: Bill Oddie
BILL ODDIE - On Ilkla Moor Baht'at (1970)

THE LONG GOODBYE
THE WOODLEIGH RESEARCH FACILITY - Heat to Meat Ratio (2026)

Saturday, 8 August 2026

LIST 266 – 08/08/2026

(Stealing Sheep - Indietracks Festival, 28/07/2019. Pictures are author's own)

Hello again,

This List comes to you live from my own attic study for the first time in four weeks, following the recent extended jaunt to see friends and family in Germany. It's nice to be home, certainly; though as the only linguist in the house, I suddenly find myself a bit less needed and valuable once more. Everyone here is quite good at ordering food, buying museum tickets and following instructions in English, y'see. Ah well, roll on the next foreign jaunt.

I haven't returned from overseas with armfuls of (or indeed, any) vinyl and CDs, as it's not all about me these days in the same way as it might have been three decades ago. I'm not sure they'd all have survived the trip back in the car, anyway, given the prevailing ferocious heat - not all of the chocolate gifts did.

I did, however, pick up a few leads as to where to look online for the present-day equivalents of all of those wonderful German language alternative/indiepop/DIY/everything else compilations that had so fired my enthusiasm for Germany's non-mainstream acts twenty to thirty years ago (the likes of Tapeta's five volumes of Müssen alle mit, Trikont's ...Mama series and Mermer's all female-fronted sampler Bleib gold, Mädchen).

If those leads take me to anything new and wonderful, I'll be certain to share them on here in the fulness of time.

More immediately, an afternoon spent waiting for successive loads of holiday washing to complete granted me a few unexpectedly free-ish hours, which I spent updating another trio of the older Lists in the back catalogue.

Thus newly reformatted and with all of the (at least) 17-year-old links repaired are Lists #05, #06 and #07, all from spring 2009.

#05 is most noteworthy to me for featuring a pre-fame, pre-full band, pre-everything else performance by Elizabeth Morris of List #253 stars Allo Darlin' on the roof of her flat. What an adventure both the band and its fans enjoyed subsequently. #06 and #07, meanwhile, are the two halves of an Annie Nightingale Request Show special, as the name suggests featuring some well-loved - and in some cases pretty frequently played - tracks from the since deceased godmother of Radio 1's cult Sunday evening show of the 1980s and early 1990s. Yes, Fish Heads is in there somewhere...

***

Be all that as it may. What of this week's actual selection?

It's a joy to be able to include something from the forthcoming first bona fide album by The Yummy Fur this century, interest in the band in most recent times having been upheld - bolstered, even - by Rock Action's release of the Piggy Wings career retrospective in 2019 and a gradual increase in live activity since.

Unity Over Europe sounds like one would hope a new Yummy Fur track would, in the way that the new Prolapse album of last year similarly met expectations - revisiting familiar fertile ground without ultimately offering only a pale facsimile of previous glories.

It's a muscular, abrasive, addictive number with as much of a nod to early (say, circa Warm Jets era) Eno as post-punk musically and some suitably surreal, recondite art and literature references in the lyrics over which to chew.

The set lists of this year's gigs to date suggest that this new material can sit cosily alongside some of the 90- to 120-second bursts of art/cinema/nightclub-themed punk-pop of yore - the likes of Kirsty Cooper and Plastic Cowboy happily survive. I'd certainly like to see them again, John McKeown having generally made for a sarcastic but winning frontperson whenever our paths crossed back in the day ("I have a cold tonight, so you'll have to forgive me for sounding like sexy Tom Waits" is one particular remembered favourite from a Manchester gig).

It's amazing how things come full circle. My first encounter of The Yummy Fur was at the Slampt Underground Organisation 540-Minute Festival in Newcastle almost exactly 29 years ago - August 23rd, 1997, to be precise. I can't remember the precise order of the later acts, but as far as anyone was designated the headliner among the thirteen playing that day, it was probably them.

Many hours prior to that, however, the Cumberland Arms venue had been hushed into enraptured silence by the achingly beautiful, lovely, sad, funny, poignant tales of one Nev Clay, at the time operating under his alias of Brenda System (a reference to the psychosocial intervention framework one assumes he may have used to treat substance and alcohol abusers during his time as a mental health nurse).

That, too, was my first experience of Nev's work; but as those of you who have been following That Music List since its reactivation in January may remember, Nev's solo gig in York last summer helped light the touchpaper under my return to seeing, writing about and generally falling hard in love with music again. Whether he realises it or not, I've a lot for which to thank him.

Hence the inclusion of Leaving Do in the first List back (q.v. #237), and hence also the flagging up of two things this week. First, a new Riley and Coe session by Nev this coming Wednesday (August 12th). Second, a new mini-LP, Until I Forget, limited to 200 vinyl copies and featuring the previous BBC session from autumn 2024 plus three revisited tracks and a new one.

That newie, a track evidently conceived and realised almost in its entirety at 4.30am one day last year, I find just as heart-rending and affecting as I did the likes of Demons and IDST in that initial live encounter all those years ago. A gifted, humble, lovely man, a fine storyteller and a gregarious stage presence, Nev is a national treasure hidden from view more than many, which is a pity.

***

Among the many other nice things this week, you might also like:

Stealing Sheep, for me one of the absolute highlights of what turned out to be the final in-person Indietracks festival just over seven years ago now (sob). A riot of gold capes, funky tunes and winsome choreography, I could easily have seen them being invited back repeatedly judged solely on the crowd's reaction, had circumstances permitted. My quest to find a full version of the plinky electropop reboot of early track Shut Eye with which they concluded their set goes on.

The latest rummage around in the Scrabble bag of indiepop royalty, from which have been pulled out two Heavenlys, a Dolly Mixture and a Trashcan Sinatra to form Railcard. Unstable Neighbour is a thing of joy, beguiling harmonies, propulsive two-chord chugging, echoey brass and all. That all augurs well for the forthcoming album.

More new, or at least not ancient, stuff from Phoebe Bridgers, Test Card, This Is Lorelei, Argonaut and Vanishing Twin (in the case of the last-named, those echoes of peak Broadcast are very much still tangible, even without former Broadcast alumnus Phil MFU among their number these days).

As with Hubert Kah in List #240, an act in Inker & Hamilton to have benefited significantly for a small part of the 1980s from a collaboration with crack producer and musician Michael Cretu, he later of Enigma fame. We'll be seeing Michael performing in his own right on these pages before the month's out, too.

Another fascinating artefact from Sheffield's indie/pop/punk/etc. prehistory. B Troop would have been around at the same sort of time as Chris Sievey's pre-Frank Sidebottom combo The Freshies across the Pennines, and with my eyes closed I could almost imagine Junior passing as one of Chris's mini masterpieces, allowing for Kevin Donoghue's less adenoidal vocals.

A song by The Colorblind James Experience which doesn't concern a relocation to a city in Tennessee.

Something from Black Uhuru briefly but heavily played on the likes of Piccadilly Radio in the mid-1980s. I had always assumed that this fine single, plus the parent album Brutal, was a Sly & Robbie production, but a re-read of the sleeve notes credits no less significant a figure in Arthur Baker. Major international hits eluded them still, but from a critical perspective this was the band's imperial phase nonetheless, Brutal joining 1984's Anthem in being Grammy nominated, if not quite matching that one's award victory.

A tribute to the recently departed Jennifer Finch of L7, and a track very deliberately chosen for the fact she created, wrote and performed lead vocals on it. And for the other fact that it absolutely spanks.

To finish, my favourite track from the whole of 2019, a decision not due solely to having seen Bilge Pump performing it live at Delicious Clam in Sheffield earlier that year, but at the same time done no harm by that either. It's probably not hard to imagine how those guitar and bass riffs, pounding over and over for north of eight minutes, gradually commanded that small venue.

J xx

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ARETHA FRANKLIN - (Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You’ve Been Gone (1968)